1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a pneumatic fender and a method for transporting the same, in particular, a pneumatic fender and a method for transporting the same in which convenience in the transportation is maintained and the reduction in durability is suppressed.
2. Background Information
In general, a pneumatic fender is arranged with a bag including a cylindrical torso body section and dome-shaped minor body sections connected to both ends thereof. When the outer diameter of the torso body section of such the pneumatic fender is 2.5 m or more, the transportation of the inflated pneumatic fender will be restricted by the vehicle restriction under the Road Traffic Law (width: 2.5 m, length: 12 m, height: 3.8 m in Japan, for example). Thus, there is a problem that the inflated pneumatic fender cannot be transported by a vehicle.
For countermeasure to the problem, conventionally, the pneumatic fender has been transported by discharging the air from the pneumatic fender to collapse it flat and folding it so that it corresponds to the width of a container of the vehicle, and then loading the folded pneumatic fender into the container.
However, since the bag of this type of pneumatic fender is made up of a rubber layer reinforced with steel cables, organic fiber cables, and the like, the bag itself is rigid and thus is difficult to be folded into a desired shape. Further, since the weight of the largest class pneumatic fender reaches 4.8 tons and therefore a heavy machinery such as a crane is needed for the folding operation, which requires sufficient consideration for safety and takes much time and thus there is a problem of extremely poor operability. Further, since an unnecessary force is locally applied to the bag, the outer surface of the bag is likely to be damaged. Furthermore, there is a problem that the folds caused by the folding result in the decrease in the strength and reduction in the durability.
In order to overcome these problems, it has been proposed to improve the durability by providing some additional member to the outer circumferential surface of the rubber film of the bag to reduce the local bending distortion caused by the folding (for example, refer to JP-A-2006-291628). However, this proposal does not directly result in the improvement of the operability of the folding, and therefore further improvement has been demanded.